Jesse Norman and the ‘path to subsidy-free deployment’

Much has been said of the cuts to the microgeneration feed-in tariff and the subsequent plight of the domestic solar industry ever since. A strategic industry that employed tens of thousands of skilled workers kneecapped almost overnight. And yet, if you only paid attention to those with the responsibility of enacting such policies, you’d be forgiven for thinking all is well.

Prior to last summer’s Brexit referendum and the resulting political upheaval, then-energy secretary Amber Rudd and her ministerial colleague Andrea Leadsom insisted that the UK’s solar industry would thrive as soon as it recalibrated to the new, slimmer rates. That PwC and the Solar Trade Association discovered that many thousands of jobs had already been lost – and many more thousands were at risk – was just a minor bump in the road.

The name on the door might have changed and the personnel reshuffled (and reshuffled again, such is the tradition), but it’s perhaps a comforting sight in an otherwise turbulent political climate that the government’s messaging has remained constant.